Abstract
The subject of the dissertation is the origin of the Old Norse periphrastic future. First, it is shown that the main exponent of future in Old Norse, as opposed to other old Germanic languages, is the auxiliary verb munu, both in terms of its frequency and its remarkably neutral meaning.
It is attested as such even in the oldest 9th century sources, the Skaldic poems. These characteristics of munu are in contrast with the other exponent of the periphrastic future, the verb skulu, which was less frequent and more modal.
The futural character of munu and the modal character of skulu are further demonstrated by an analysis of the means of future expression used in prophecies and curses. Discussion of the grammaticalization of munu has shown that as early as the 9th century the verb had developed meanings that are derived from future (particularly the probability meaning).
Hence, the futural use must have been fairly common for a considerably long period before the first attestations. Further evidence for the early use of munu-future in North Germanic comes from the reconstruction of the morphological development of the verb.
It shows a transition from the class of regular weak verbs to the preterite-present class which was associated with modal/function verbs in Germanic. These findings show that the Old Norse munu-future reached this high degree of grammaticalization much earlier than its counterparts in other Germanic languages.
It is argued that this occurred because of the North Germanic loss of unaccented verbal prefixes which had a perfectivizing function and which were to some extent used as future markers in other Germanic languages, particularly Gothic. The early use of the historical present in Old Norse is also linked to prefix loss and the emergence of periphrastic future.
It is concluded that the periphrastic future was an early syntactic innovation which set apart the North Germanic tense system from the West and East Germanic ones.